Photographs • Gary Briechle SIGNED

On the rocky coast of Maine, Briechle found himself driven to make pictures, using the wet-plate collodion process, of the individuals who constitute his stand-in family.

“The last time I photographed Arizona (an eight-year-old girl that I’ve been photographing since she was one) I did what I always do: I taped a black Walmart sheet to the house, set the camera up on the tripod and got her to lean back with shoulders touching to steady herself. A minute later, as I poured fixer over the glass, an image appeared out of a swirl of watery blue-green. Even though I had done this countless times before, what I saw was an image I never saw before.” — Gary Briechle